 One of the things we know that ain't so: Is US labor's share relatively stable?Andrew Young () Journal of Macroeconomics, 2010, vol. 32, issue 1, 90-102 Abstract: Solow (1958) argued that, from 1929 to 1954, US aggregate labor's share was not stable relative to what we would expect given individual industry labor's shares. I confirm and extend this result using data from 1958 to 1996 that includes 35 industries (roughly two-digit SIC level) and spans the entire US economy. Changes in industry shares in total value-added are essentially unrelated to aggregate labor's share movements. Industry labor's shares comovements contribute positively to aggregate labor's share movements. These findings give us a clearer perspective on one of the stylized facts of economic growth. If the great macroeconomic ratio is meaningful, it must be interpreted in terms of long-run, offsetting shifts in "services" industries versus "goods" industries, both in terms of their labor's shares and shares in total value-added. At least at an annual frequency, there is nothing particularly stable about aggregate labor's share. Keywords: Labor'; s; share; Factor; shares; Income; distribution; Great; ratio; Balanced; growth; Economic; growth (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jmacro:v:32:y:2010:i:1:p:90-102 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Macroeconomics is currently edited by Douglas McMillin and Theodore Palivos More articles in Journal of Macroeconomics from Elsevier |
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